Yet Another Post, Part Deux
In response my last column, Read for Pleasure made the following comment:
When I write about a book, I generally try to explain why I feel as I do about it. I write that way because I enjoy it, and because as a reader I don’t find reviews like “Ur book sux!!” helpful. But I would bet that many authors, too, find it easier to ignore “Ur book sux!!” than critical essays.
Does that make it a moral imperative that I forswear essays and start rating books from “YUMMM” to “SUX!!!!”?
She honed in on the anxiety underneath my commentary: how does the notion of reader influence on the genre relate to the debates over the validity of reviews and of critique more generally? In other words, how can there be, on the one hand, this perception that readers drive what’s published, but on the other hand, such a strong resistance to reader response to what’s published? Is it just the case of different people having different views, or is there a tension within the genre and within the Romance community around the relationship of readers to authors and readers to books?
More and more, I am moving toward the opinion that there is a push-pull in the genre between the more fan reader culture of Romance and the critical reader culture that has recently become more prominent through blogs, and even through sites like All About Romance, where reviewers took many hits over the years for daring to review Romance in a serious way. And another tension around what constitutes “real” reviewing rather than, well, whatever falls outside those boundaries, I guess.
No matter how many times the argument is made the reviews are written for readers rather than authors, there is still some question of whether critical reviewing is “good” for the genre or not. It is better, for example, to just say, “Hey, I didn’t like this book,” rather than to say, “I disliked this book because X, Y, and Z”? Do authors prefer one type of commentary to the other, and should readers even care? Should reviewers feel any responsibility to authors when they craft their reviews?
Simultaneously, there are questions around whether and how readers influence what’s written and what’s published in the genre. Do the sentiments of Suzanne Brockmann, for example, represent the feelings other authors have, especially when crafting what they see as controversial material? Is there any realistic way to encourage authors not to be influenced by readers, or is that very plea attempting to influence authors? After all, what’s to say that an author who pays very close attention to readers can’t write – haven’t written — incredible books?
These two points of tension – between critical reading and reader influence — feel related to me, but I can’t quite line up all the points of contact and contrast. For example, I sense that the people who are against critical reviewing are probably not the same ones who think readers should influence the genre. Except I sometimes get the sense that readers as fans or consumers are not seen in the same light as readers as critics, so already that distinction is muddied by the possibility that authors could find some kinds of readers worth paying attention to but not others. Especially if the difference is drawn along the lines of salability.
For me, as a reader, critical reviews help me value the genre even more, because they allow for a level of contemplation of certain books, trends, and tropes that makes me appreciate it so much more when a book works for me. And to appreciate why the same book might not work for someone else. Those are the reviews that make me re-think my own assumptions, that can make me re-think whole books, and I just don’t see how that could be bad for the genre. As for reader influence on the genre, I’m not sure either how great it is or how I feel about it. On the one hand, as some authors have pointed out, what editors acquire is directly related to what will sell, which involves a fair amount of speculation about what readers want. And so as much as I think that system is flawed, it is dangerously naïve to deny that readers don’t play some role in the way authors are conceptualizing and writing their books.
All of which leads me to a certain speculation I’ve been entertaining lately that the Romance community might simply split along several lines – including the more fan-based culture and the more critical reader-based culture. Of course a formal split could never occur, as we will all be reading some of the same books. But there does seem to be a pretty strong schism in regard to how readers should or shouldn’t regard the genre, and some authors certainly seem to have strong opinions on this point, too. Personally, I think such a split would be a loss for the genre and the community as a whole, because to me, both aspects are valuable and intrinsic to the unique draw of Romance, both in its books and in its culture.
What I really wish for and hope will happen is that we will all just continue to bump and muddle along, discussing these issues and in an open environment, even if there isn’t widespread agreement.
